Archive for Gender Disappointment – Page 2

After years in which rabbis forbade any sort of gender selection at conception, a recent revolutionary Halachic (Jewish legal) ruling has now deemed it permissible to intervene and select the gender of a fetus in certain situations. The ruling was to be officially issued at a conference on Wednesday organized by the Puah Institute, which offers fertility treatments in line with Jewish law.

“There are three ways to select the gender of a fetus,” Institute founder Rabbi Menachem Burstein said. “The first way is the most natural, and depends on the man and the exact time the woman ovulates. Another method involves putting the sperm in a special apparatus to separate the male [Y chromosome] sperm from the female [X chromosome] sperm. The third method involves in vitro fertilization.”

According to Burstein, rabbis have forbidden any kind of intervention until now. ”It is considered to be the spilling of seed, and a gross intervention, which is generally unacceptable. But since the number of requests has been growing, and since sometimes the requests stem from a deep psychological need, it is possible to permit the second and third methods,” he said.

“We have come across cases of people who felt it was important to have sons to carry on the family line because of the Holocaust, or families with six or seven daughters in which the father wants a son so much that it threatens the marriage. In cases like this, the matter will be examined by the appropriate rabbis, psychologists and medical committees, and clearly a Halachic compromise can be reached. Jewish law is making incredible strides as medicine advances. It is easiest always to say no, but sometimes, if the rules can be eased or and if solutions can be found then we should strive for that,” he said.

Taken from www.algemeiner.com

Some Comments-

At GenderDreaming, we have to LOL at the “3 ways” part. First, timing has been disproven and cannot be used to select the gender of a fetus alone. Shettles was wrong and that just doesn’t work. Second, the “apparatus” they refer to has to be either MicroSort, which is no longer available in the USA or Ericsson which has never been proven to work. There is not one single independent review outside of the people that work at Ericsson that shows that it does anything at all.

The only way to guarantee the gender of a fetus is through IVF with PGD.

It is nice to see some acknowledgement of Gender Desire/Disappointment that some people have- the “deep psychological need”. That is very true and it is something that affects many people from all over the world. Most of the world outside of India and China are hoping to have a daughter through Gender Selection methods. Our community is made up of mostly women that desperately want a daughter to balance out their family dynamic. Of course, there are people that are looking for sons too, but it isn’t the men doing the looking, it is a process and decision that is spearheaded by the woman. That is the modern era of Gender Selection.

GD is a funny thing. It can come in any form, at any time. It happens to women having their first child, or women having their sixth. It can happen to young moms, older moms, dads, grandparents, brothers and sisters. It can happen no matter the gender of your kids, whenever that dream in your heart does not mesh with reality. And though you may feel guilty or ashamed, and wonder how you can be having these feelings, you are not alone. No one’s feelings are any more or less legitimate than any one else’s. We are all here to help and support each other.

GD seems to come in a variety of flavors. Many seem to feel that moms with several of one gender of child are the only ones who ‘deserve’ to have GD, but the reality is very different. Here are some examples –

Some of us wanted only one child of a certain gender

Some of us wanted a ‘pigeon pair’, one boy and one girl

Some of us wanted children of all of only one gender

Some of us wanted to give an older child a playmate of the same or opposite sex

Some of us feel closer to our children of a certain gender, and even though we have both, we have a preference for one

Some of us lost a child, or have a handicapped child, and want another child of that same gender, or of the opposite gender so our child does not feel pressure to be a replacement

Everyone’s story is unique and exceptional, and we are all entitled to our feelings. It doesn’t matter if you have children of both genders, you can still have GD. Even if you seem to have the ideal family that others would love to have, you can still have GD. Please, please don’t feel guilty or hesitate to share your story. No matter what ‘flavor’ of GD you have, there are others out there who feel the same.